"The Opera" by R. A. Streatfeild. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.
OPERA BUFFA, OPÉRA COMIQUE, AND SINGSPIEL. PERGOLESI—ROUSSEAU—MONSIGNY—GRÉTRY—CIMAROSA—HILLER
CHAPTER IV
MOZART
CHAPTER V
THE CLOSE OF THE CLASSICAL PERIOD. MÉHUL—CHERUBINI—SPONTINI—BEETHOVEN—BOIELDIEU
CHAPTER VI
WEBER AND THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL. WEBER—SPOHR—MARSCHNER—KREUTZER—LORTZING—NICOLAI—FLOTOW—MENDELSSOHN—SCHUBERT—SCHUMANN
CHAPTER VII
ROSSINI, DONIZETTI, AND BELLINI
CHAPTER VIII
MEYERBEER AND FRENCH OPERA. HÉROLD—MEYERBEER—BERLIOZ—HALÉVY—AUBER
CHAPTER IX
WAGNER'S EARLY WORKS
CHAPTER X
WAGNER'S LATER WORKS
CHAPTER XI
MODERN FRANCE. GOUNOD—THOMAS—BIZET—SAINT SAËNS—REYER—MASSENET—BRUNEAU—CHARPENTIER—DEBUSSY
CHAPTER XII
MODERN ITALY. VERDI—BOITO—PONCHIELLI—PUCCINI—MASCAGNI—LEONCAVALLO—GIORDANO
CHAPTER XIII
MODERN GERMAN AND SLAVONIC OPERA. CORNELIUS—GOETZ—GOLDMARK—HUMPERDINCK—STRAUSS—SMETANA—GLINKA—PADEREWSKI
CHAPTER XIV
ENGLISH OPERA. BALFE—WALLACE—BENEDICT—GORING THOMAS—MACKENZIE STANFORD—SULLIVAN—SMYTH
INDEX OF OPERAS
INDEX OF COMPOSERS
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R. A. Streatfeild
A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions of all Works in the Modern Repertory
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With the production of 'Euridice' the history of opera may be said to begin; but if the new art-form had depended only upon the efforts of Peri and his friends, it must soon have languished and died. With all their enthusiasm, the little band of Florentines had too slight an acquaintance with the science of music to give proper effect to the ideas which they originated. Peri built the ship, but it was reserved for the genius of Claudio Monteverde to launch it upon a wider ocean than his predecessor could have dreamed of. Monteverde had been trained in the polyphonic school of Palestrina, but his genius had never acquiesced in the rules and restrictions in which the older masters delighted. He was a poor contrapuntist, and his madrigals are chiefly interesting as a proof of how ill the novel harmonies of which he was the discoverer accorded with the severe purity of the older school But in the new art he found the field his genius required. What had been weakness and license in the madrigal became strength and beauty in the opera. The new wine was put into new bottles, and both were preserved. Monteverde produced his 'Arianna' in 1607, and his 'Orfeo' in 1608, and with these two works started opera upon the path of development which was to culminate in the works of Wagner. 'Arianna,' which, according to Marco da Gagliano, himself a rival composer of high ability, 'visibly moved all the theatre to tears,' is lost to us save for a few quotations; but 'Orfeo' is in existence, and has recently been reprinted in Germany. A glance at the score shows what a gulf separates this work from Peri's treatment of the same story. Monteverde, with his orchestra of thirty-nine instruments—brass, wood, and strings complete—his rich and brilliant harmonies, sounding so strangely beautiful to ears accustomed only to the severity of the polyphonic school, and his delicious and affecting melodies, sometimes rising almost to the dignity of an aria, must have seemed something more than human to the eager Venetians as they listened for the first time to music as rich in colour as the gleaming marbles of the Cà d'Oro or the radiant canvases of Titian and Giorgione.
The success of Monteverde had its natural result. He soon had pupils and imitators by the score. The Venetians speedily discovered that they had an inherent taste for opera, and the musicians of the day delighted to cater for it. Monteverde's most famous pupil was Cavalli, to whom may with some certainty be attributed an innovation which was destined to affect the future of opera very deeply. In his time, to quote Mr. Latham's 'Renaissance of Music,' 'the musica parlante of the earliest days of opera was broken up into recitative, which was less eloquent, and aria, which was more ornamental. The first appearance of this change is to be found in Cavalli's operas, in which certain rhythmical movements called "arias" which are quite distinct from the musica parlante, make their appearance. The music assigned by Monteverde to Orpheus when he is leading Eurydice back from the Shades is undoubtedly an air, but the situation is one to which an air is appropriate, and musica parlante would be inappropriate. If the drama had been a play to be spoken and not sung, there would not have been any incongruity in allotting a song to Orpheus, to enable Eurydice to trace him through the dark abodes of Hades. But the arias of Cavalli are not confined to such special situations, and recur frequently,' Cavalli had the true Venetian love of colour. In his hands the orchestra began to assume a new importance. His attempts to give musical expression to the sights and sounds of nature—the murmur of the sea, the rippling of the brook and the tempestuous fury of the winds—mark an interesting step in the history of orchestral develop ment. With Marcantonio Cesti appears another innovation of scarcely less importance to the history of opera than the invention of the aria itself—the da capo or the repetition of the first part of the aria in its entirety after the conclusion of the second part. However much the da capo may have contributed to the settlement of form in composition, it must be admitted that it struck at the root of all real dramatic effect, and in process of time degraded opera to the level of a concert. Cesti was a pupil of Carissimi, who is famous chiefly for his sacred works, and from him he learnt to prefer mere musical beauty to dramatic truth. Those of his operas which remain to us show a far greater command of orchestral and vocal resource than Monteverde or Cavalli could boast, but so far as real expression and sincerity are concerned, they are inferior to the less cultured efforts of the earlier musicians. It would be idle to attempt an enumeration of the Venetian composers of the seventeenth century and their works. Some idea of the musical activity which prevailed may be gathered from the fact that while the first public theatre was opened in 1637, before the close of the century there were no less than eleven theatres in the city devoted to the performance of opera alone.
